


Like a Forgotten Song

by namedanonymous



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4731563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namedanonymous/pseuds/namedanonymous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You tell yourself that things aren’t beautiful because they last, but the mantra gets stuck somewhere between your thoughts and your soul that aches every time you hear his laugh and see those brilliantly blue eyes –a laugh just slightly off and eyes that look at you with an odd look, like he’s caught between thinking you a stranger and something else, something more. But maybe this is beautiful too, in its own painful almost way. Inspired by Regina Spektor's song "Eet."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Forgotten Song

The first time he says hello (the first time he  _really_  says it after all those lonely months, a hello that is more than just a laugh and a joke and a request to show someone else around the city that used to be yours –achingly memorized and familiar like  _he_  used to be) it feels so wrong, like the world is crashing at your feet and there’s not a thing you can do. It’s like there’s something you’re to remember, some response that comes light and quick on your tongue, as natural as the beat of a song you both once knew, but the rhythm only comes through in offbeat tones.

There’s worry and a tentative inquiry around the edges of that one ‘hello,’ like he’s not really sure if he wants to talk to you at all. It’s like that first day he gathered his courage and sat next to you during a break between sparring bouts, offering water in hand and a shy smile on his lips. But it’s  _nothing_  like that now, even if his smile still holds those wavering corners, because you were strangers on the road to something more then, and now in the goddamn present you’re supposed to be so much more than that –more than just shaky grins and hesitant greetings, the opposite of friends treading backways down the road to strangers. You were made for breaking curfews and competitive streaks. You’re friends and confidants and questmates and partners in praetorship. You know his deepest secrets and he knows yours. Or at least you remember his. You wonder if he still remembers  _your_  whispered secrets under that nonchalant voice and the new girl at his side –the new secrets he has to keep that you  _don’t_  know.

You tell yourself that things aren’t beautiful because they last, but the mantra gets stuck somewhere between your thoughts and your soul that aches every time you hear his laugh and see those brilliantly blue eyes –a laugh just  _slightly_  off and eyes that look at you with an odd look, like he’s caught between thinking you a stranger and something else, something  _more._ But maybe this is beautiful too, in its own painful  _almost_  way.

He comes to sit next to you as you chew on the end of a pen cap and circle typos, his hands on your tense shoulders as you smile up at him before you forget that the year isn’t the previous and you’re veterans of two wars not one. You talk about New Rome and the shrines on the hill in a companionable exchange that gives you a tiny thrill of hope before you see him glancing at the setting sun like he has somewhere to be. He leaves for the night before you’ve said what you’ve wanted to, and you watch his shadow, your fingers tapping out a rhythm on your knee as you wonder what’s missing between you two or if it’s just a chasm left by time’s claws too deep to fill. He disappears into a cabin where the daughter of Aphrodite waits and you try not to be bitter for waiting too long and missing that window you once had. (For letting that girl’s mother worm her way into your psychology). But you think you could stand it if only things shifted back to the time  _before_  all this,  _before_  you thought of things as romantic instead of platonic, if the world was in color and not just faded pastels like the earth has been stamped out too many times to be vibrant.  

It’s these echoes that pain you the most: the curve of his lips when you sit and eat brownies at your favorite café followed by a twist (almost a grimace) downwards as if he’s being force fed memories he never wanted; the way his hand catches yours for a fraction of a moment, firm and strong and accompanied by a smile that speaks of things you know and other you cannot understand –because flying solo over the Atlantic and visiting the place you thought you would revel in together only warrants a small glance into his suffering. But you try to take solace in the fact that he doesn’t know how you suffered –how you  _suffer_ —either.

You wonder if he feels it too, this  _thing_  between you and if perhaps he just doesn’t want things to go back to  _before_ (why would he, anyways?). But you try, oh how you try to mend those bridges, to build what once was back into being from twisted metal and simple secrets that don’t stir up too much of the past. What you don’t know is you have to stir up the past to set a strong foundation, have to face things you don’t want to and talk about the subjects you avoid. You don’t do any of these things and so perhaps this is why the bridges wobble under the weight of your conversation.

It makes you think of those movies he made you watch once (some long winter weekend much colder than normal where you curled up on the couch with hot chocolate between your hands), the ones with the quotes asking “how do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold." And you wonder if this thing between you two, the hesitant conversations and touches that could mean so many different things, isn’t one of those hurts that even time cannot smooth over. It has always been your nemesis, time, hasn’t it? Always too little and not enough: too little to become what you were supposed to be, and not enough in your life to heal back what once was –what could have been.

You wonder if things will ever be as they once were; if the gods will somehow turn a great hourglass and your memories will trickle back nine months. You’ll wake that fateful morning and it won’t be to a nightmare of loneliness and responsibility to shoulder on you own. You wonder if that’s really what you want, if it’s worth wanting at all (for such wishes are frivolous and perhaps you’ve gotten accustomed to the constant pain in your chest even as you smile).

Feet are pale with the dust from Via Praetoria and you hear her laugh,  _their_  laugh, and you wonder if you’re happy because he’s happy now. Because he seems to have finally found that place he belongs (even if it isn’t with you). You wonder if you’ll ever finish that conversation he started before he disappeared into that fateful night –if you’ll ever find out why he’s so sorry. You don’t think you will, however, and you try to come to terms with it.

Things are different now; streams that once flowed so swiftly now run dry, and oiled machines have turned to creaking, rusty joints –only shadows of what once was. But you still wonder if that thing between you and him when you talk will ever weather away; if you’ll ever ask if he remembers your secrets, and if he knows you’ll take his to the grave.

Because you were friends and confidants and questmates and partners and something more that wasn’t quite given enough time to flower. And now you’re strangers that know too much and dream too little. You wonder what you’ll be next, if the cycle will not start anew and the dance you both knew so well, the book you both seemed to be writing with your actions and words, that song you once knew the rhythm to like your own steady heartbeat won’t being again.

You wonder but you do not hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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